The Gold Beneath Their Tongue

They speak of green on flags and dreams,
Yet trade our forests for muddy streams.
Beneath their suits and polished lies,
A nation's soul quietly dies.

In the hush of night, the diggers come,
With torch and tools and silent drums.
Not rebels, no — but agents blessed,
By neckties nodding in government vests.

Our rivers once spoke the language of gods,
Now they cough silt and chemical odds.
Pra River weeps in mercury tears,
Offin groans, Ankobra disappears.

And still — they sip from mineral springs,
While villagers bathe in rusted things.
The child drinks poison through plastic straws,
While politicians toast without pause.

The Hidden Architects

Who armed the peasant with dynamite?
Who sold the land in shadowed light?
Not the poor — no, they are pawns,
In a war designed by suits and thorns.

See the convoy of tinted glass,
Sliding past the village mass.
They speak in codes, exchange fake deeds,
While royal lands bleed from ancient greed.

Chiefs sign silence for brown envelopes,
Pastors pray blessings over blood-soaked hopes.
MPs dine while diggers bleed,
And claim they’ve done “their best” indeed.

The Cost of Gold

But what is gold to a dying tree?
What is wealth if our spirits flee?
What coin can buy a rainforest lost?
What ballot pays the eternal cost?

The cocoa fields now lie in waste,
Choked by the greed of hurried haste.
No yams grow where the toxins sleep,
Only ghost farms where ancestors weep.

The frogs no longer sing at dawn,
The birds have flown, the bees are gone.
Our elders cough from tainted breath,
The soil now whispers tales of death.

A People Bound by Quiet Chains

Don’t be fooled by campaign songs —
The rulers know what’s truly wrong.
In boardrooms, they slice the land,
With foreign devils, hand in hand.

They build empires on broken backs,
Smile for cameras, cover their tracks.
The law is blind when bribes are loud,
Justice drowns beneath a cloud.

We call it “galamsey” — illegal, yes.
But who has stamped its cursed success?
Not the boy with pickaxe in hand,
But the wolves who rule this bleeding land.

A Call for Reckoning

Let the youth rise with forest cries,
Let scholars tear off suited lies.
Let drummers drum the truth aloud,
Let prophets speak what’s not allowed.

Let chiefs who sold their stool for gain,
Be named, and stripped of borrowed reign.
Let documents see the public’s eye,
And false elites be crucified.

The earth is groaning — don’t you hear?
The ancestors rage, the spirits fear.
Our future chokes on acid streams,
Our children die in poisoned dreams.

The Abolition Song

Let there be no more peace with filth,
No more trade of soul for wealth.
Let excavators be burned to dust,
Let laws be weapons, firm and just.

Let reparation fill the land,
From stolen gold and bloody hands.
Let schools replace the mining pits,
Let trees reclaim where greed once sits.

For when the last river turns to clay,
And all the forests fall away,
We’ll learn — too late — that gold is sand,
Without clean water, trees, or land.

Final Cry

Oh Ghana, mother of rising flame,
Don’t let them mock your holy name.
Awake! Arise! The time is now —
To break the lies, to cleanse the vow.

Let galamsey be named and gone,
Let truth march boldly with the dawn.
And if the leaders hide the light,
Then let the people be the fight.

– by a voice from the rivers, and the roots, and the rain
…for the land that bleeds beneath gold boots.